8/13/2012

Some notes on claims about Australia's crime rates

After the attack at the Aurora movie theater, there have been a lot of discussion about Australia's gun control laws. For example, see this piece at the Huffington Post.

A decade-long examination of the program in the journal "Injury Prevention" concluded that "chances of gun death in Australia dropped twice as steeply" after the program was implemented. A study by Harvard University in the Spring of 2011 suggested that the program helped reduce, either causally or directly, firearm deaths, gun-related suicides and accidental shootings. The Washington Post, summarizing many of the studies, concluded that there was "strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness." . . .

Here is the actual data from Australia. First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn't often acknowledged. There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback. Why is that important? Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing. Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.

For example, homicides didn't fall until eight years after the laws. It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur. Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature. A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time.

Crime can change for lots of reasons besides changes in gun control laws. One way to get a handle on this is to see how Australian homicides are changing relative to other crime rates. A single continuous crime data series isn't available, but the two diagrams below show how homicides is falling almost continuously as a fraction of violent crime. If anything, the drop in homicides relative to overall violent crime was biggest in the 1970s.

See also homicides relative to overall crime. Again, it is very hard to see any benefit from the gun control laws.

UPDATE: Comments on the Huffington Post Show today. Purely cross-sectional evidence in references to the UK, Germany, etc. doesn't mention that homicide rates were even lower relative to the US before they had gun control. The graph that they showed across countries (at about 12:55) makes it look like the US has a similar murder rate to other countries such as Russia, Mexico, and other South American countries. For further information see here and here.

Finally, despite all the claims to the contrary, Australia didn't ban guns, though it did impose stricter criteria for people to own certain types of guns.

UPDATE 2: Ann Coulter has this interesting discussion of a New York Times piece by Rosenthal claiming "More Guns = More Killing":

Rosenthal also produces a demonstrably false statistic about Australia's gun laws, as if it's a fact that has been carefully vetted by the Newspaper of Record, throwing in the true source only at the tail-end of the paragraph:"After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. ... Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent ...," said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation." . . .Whether or not the homicide rate went up or down in Australia as a result of strict gun control laws imposed in 1997 is a fact that could have been checked by Times researchers. But they didn't, because facts wouldn't have given them the answer they wanted.Needless to say, the effect of Australia's gun ban has been extensively researched by Australian academics. As numerous studies have shown: After the gun ban, gun homicides in Australia did not decline any more than they were expected to without a gun ban.Thus, for example, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, the homicide rate has been in steady decline from 1969 to the present, with only one marked uptick in 1998-99 -- right after the gun ban was enacted.The showstopper for anti-gun activists like Ms. Rosenthal and Ms. Peters is the fact that suicides by firearm seemed to decrease more than expected after the 1997 gun ban.But so did suicides by other means. Something other than the gun ban must have caused people to stop guzzling poison and jumping off bridges. (Some speculate that it's the availability of anti-depressants like Prozac.)Curiously -- and not mentioned by Rosenthal -- the number of accidental firearms deaths skyrocketed after Australia's 1997 gun ban, although the law included stringent gun training requirements.It turns out, until the coroner has certified a death as a "suicide," it's classified as "unintentional." So either mandatory gun training has led to more accidents, or a lot of suicides are ending up in the "accident" column.Most pinheadedly, especially for a graduate of the Harvard Medical School, Rosenthal says: "Before (the gun ban), Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. (Since then,) there have been no mass killings."Mass murder is a rare enough crime that any statistician will tell you discerning trends is impossible. In this country, the FBI doesn't even track mass murder as a specific crime category. . . .Totally unbeknownst to Elisabeth Rosenthal, Australian academics have already examined the mass murder rate by firearm by comparing Australia to a control country: New Zealand. (Do they teach "control groups" at Harvard?)New Zealand is strikingly similar to Australia. Both are isolated island nations, demographically and socioeconomically similar. Their mass murder rate before Australia's gun ban was nearly identical: From 1980 to 1996, Australia's mass murder rate was 0.0042 incidents per 100,000 people and New Zealand's was 0.0050 incidents per 100,000 people.The principal difference is that, post-1997, New Zealand remained armed to the teeth -- including with guns that were suddenly banned in Australia.While it's true that Australia has had no more mass shootings since its gun ban, neither has New Zealand, despite continuing to be massively armed. . . .

The paper by McPhedran and Baker that Ann might be citing has some interesting facts. I frequently hear about the mass public shootings in Australia prior to the 1996 law, but it turns out that there were only 4 of them between 1980 and 1996. 8 other attacks were "domestic" attacks. If you look at total multiple victim-suicide attacks in Australia, the attacks are hardly eliminated after 1996.

I notice a massacre at Monash Uni in 2002. 2 were killed and 5 wounded by a man with a firearm. New Zealand has had no massacres in the same period and no bans on guns so they have semi automatic firearms. It does not appear that the Pt Arthur laws did anything good.

I think it's less about gun control (though I appreciate the gov't taking some responsibility for controlling gun ownership in Australia) and more about the culture of a place. In Australia, we've had guns and a violent history not dissimilar to the US, but the right to gun ownership was never written into our constitution, and therefore it's less of a pride (or rights) issue now, when the gov't chooses to intervene.

Stephen, there was a shooting at monash that resulted in our handgun laws being changed due to the offender using 2 handguns. Note they have done nothing either as our currant crime wave in sydney will attest.

SD78, do you know what you are talking about? obviously not, the law enacted in NZ are nothing compared to australia and you can still own quite easily firearms that are banned from ownership here. Unlike you and Fatto at the top, i actually study this as a living and can assure you that your wrong.

the claims that there have been no mass shootings in Australia since Howard's gun laws were enacted in the late 1990s is totally erroneous;

if you define a mass shooting as involving four or more fatalities, then, there have been several such....most noticeably during the gang-related killings in Melbourne, 2000-2005;

there has been an exponential increase in violent crime of all sorts since the NFA....most noticeably of armed, violent home invasions....a simple Google search will quickly establish, from raw police data, that there has been almost 2000 armed violent home invasions in an eighteen month period.... http://tinyurl.com/0zz-hm-invsns-ggl-rslts ; this is an ongoing trend;

further-more, there have been continuing claims in the media that police in various Australian states have been 'covering up' violent crime stats; a couple of years ago, an Assitant Commissioner of Police in Victoria resigned over just such a claim.....viz: Sir Ken Jones;

overall, Howard's gun laws have been an unmitigated disaster with many Aussies now under siege in their own homes and terrorised both in public and in private by heavily armed, psychopathic thugs.....as per the predictions of Prfssr Lott and others over the years.

*note*even with the heavy restrictions and conditions for obtaining a shooters license in Australia, self-defence is still not a legitimate reason to apply for a fire-arms license!

the claims that there have been no mass shootings in Australia since Howard's gun laws were enacted in the late 1990s is totally erroneous;

if you define a mass shooting as one involving four or more fatalities, then, there have been several such....most noticeably during the gang-related killings in Melbourne, 2000-2005;

there has been an exponential increase in violent crime of all sorts since the NFA....most noticeably of armed, violent home invasions....a simple Google search will quickly establish, from raw police data, that there has been almost 2000 armed violent home invasions in an eighteen month period....this is an ongoing trend;

there have also been allegations of cover-ups of official violent crime stats; a few years back, an Assistant Commission of the Victoria Police resigned over just such an allegation;

overall, Howard's gun laws have been an unmitigated disaster with many Aussies now under siege in their own homes and terrorised both in public and in private by heavily armed, psychopathic thugs.....as per the predictions of Prfssr Lott and others over the years.

*note*even with the heavy restrictions and conditions for obtaining a shooters license in Australia, self-defence is still not a legitimate reason to apply for a fire-arms license!

I am basically in favor of Gun controls in Australia because the USA has such huge problems associated with Gun ownership. They have kids taking Guns into school for "show and tell" They have Guns used for settling minor disputes (over car parking etc) large numbers of people accidentally shot and injured/killed. So their are plenty of reasons for Australia to argue aginst going down the road of allowing Guns for self protection. But the problem is you can not deny the fact that we have higher rates of violent crime (home invasions etc) and no legal right to defend our self. If all of these problems continueto increase how can you expect people to be reasonable and not demand Guns for self protection?

The main problem with your government compiled statistics is that they all have the same flaws - they do not include government crimes and government killings.

For example the one million Iraqis killed by the USA government never made it into their gun crime statistics. Neither did the people of Nagasaki or Hiroshima. And tge 3 million Vietnamese killed also never became part of any statistics. The same goes for the millions and millions of people killed during WW1 and WW2. Including the 6 million German Jews.

When you accept those as murder, you soon realize government is far more sadistic and out of control than all of the school mass shooters combined.

Do you really think a lying mass murdering government taking my guns away will really make us all safer?

Gun grabbers know really nothing about guns other than what their TV depicts and what their government statistics tell them. And of course, that provides you with an extremely distorted view of what guns are.

After the USA, the most civilian armed western countries are Norway and Canada. If the USA crime rate was really caused by the guns, wouldn't the Norway and Canada crime statistics trail just behind the USA?

In Canada, the statistics show that while handguns are restricted, they are increasing in use as a ratio of firearms crime in homicide, while overall homicide rates are dropping, and firearm homicide rates are dropping. The largest change in our homicide rates came in the late 60's and early 70's, right after a basic ban on concealed carry laws. A law was introduced that gave police discretion over concealed carry for self-defense, and while technically it was still a legal valid reason to apply for a permit, permits were never granted. Canada saw it's highest ever homicide rate in 1975, and we are just now getting back to levels from prior to the concealed carry law. Every time a gun control law was introduced in Canada, homicide rates went up, even though they were on the decline, they went up, and then started on their decline again, but the point is that they were already declining in the first place.

I'm amazed at the lack of objective critical thinking but it seems to pervade the article too. John, I know you have skills but academic objectively has left. Perhaps, it was never there. More guns, less crime has not held the test of time. Of course, all we have is polling as to ascertain ownership. When a person owns 100 hundred guns, more guns means nothing. It is the percentage of ownership that is important. For close to 15 years, according to Gallup and the General Social Survey poll, ownership has flatlined with slight movement up and down yet staying relatively fixed since 1998. CDC data evidences that firearm homicide has dropped but nonfatal firearm assault injury has risen. Combining the 2 categories from 2000 to 2014, the increase has been 6.3%. Under that premise, we could conclude that stable number of firearm owners but more combined fatal and nonfatal injury. Fortunately, though presumptuous, I think it's likely that advanced medical treatments in time have reduced homicide and not firearm fatal and nonfatal assault.

Now, that we've dispensed with that probable fallacy, let's look at Australian homicide from 1996 to 2003. Removing the murdered Port Arthur 35, the homicide rate would have dropped to about 1.79 in 1996. Of course, that didn't happen but I'll remove them anyway. In 2003, the rate was 1.41. However, if we remove firearm homicide and look at homicide by all other methods, 1996 had a rate of about 1.40 dropping to 1.14, an 18% drop. Firearm homicide dropped 31%. Is that a minor drop?

The US homicide rate 7.66 in 1996. The firearm homicide rate was 5.21. In 2003, the homicide rate was 6.11 with a 4.11 firearm homicide rate. Of course, the lower rates are (Australia), it should be difficult to achieve greater drops. So, the US rate for other methods was 2.45 in 1996 dropping 19%. Virtually, no difference existed in other method rate drop. However, firearm homicide dropped 21% in the US compared to the 31% drop in Australia.

Of course, we have not explored suicide and firearm suicide but, here, the correlation is more compelling. So, the firearm rate drop has been impressive. Even if we ignore the Port Arthur year and examine the drop from 1997 (1.73) to 2014 (1.04), we find a 40% firearm death rate drop. In that period of time, we drop from 11.90 in 1997 to 10.54 in 2014. That's only an 11% drop. Every examination I can fathom have evidenced reduction in fatality as a result of firearms.

Robbery had an increase until 2001 (causation is difficult to determine, though I see you've tried, Mr. Lott) but then the drop precipitously fell. I believe the US rate was 102 in 2014 while the Australian rate was 41 that years. Over 19 years, Australia had a slightly greater rate drop. The FBI data in the US reports rape while Australia reports sexual assault. The only way to see similar data over time is through the BJS Victimization report (NCVS data). We are slightly higher in these numbers over Australia but it's remained relatively fixed over time. Firearm regulations or ownership seems to have no difference on this rate in the US or Australia. The only violent crime is all assault in Australia versus aggravated assault in the US. However, Australia has had a rise in minor assault. Serious assault resulting in injury is not so compelling.

Unless you can explain the errors in my reasoning, I believe your premise on Australia crime and, in particular, on homicide, is biased at best and in some spots, completely wrong.